About Us

San Francisco Waldorf School is made up of about 400 students from across the Bay Area and the world, making us one of the largest Waldorf schools in North America. Students raised here attend our school, families move to San Francisco to join us, and international students come for our High School Global Exchange program. Our school celebrated its 45th anniversary in the 2023-2024 school year.

At San Francisco Waldorf School, students learn how to learn: they are taught how to think, not what to think. They ask questions, check facts, challenge assumptions, and become adept at synthesizing information. They collaborate to find new solutions with a uniquely human combination of imagination and reason.

Our Mission

With love and devotion, we strive to nourish the unique capacities of every student, that in each may awaken the critical and creative intelligence to envision the future, the compassion and commitment to understand others, and the courage to be a free and active participant in our common human experience.

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Why SF Waldorf? Why Now?

Waldorf Graduates are Prepared for Life

We recognize students as whole individuals, with intellectual, social, emotional, and spiritual questions, and we believe that education should support the development of the whole human being. Through integrating courses across academic disciplines—including science, mathematics, language, nature, movement, and the arts—our students balance knowing and questioning. Students find healthy achievement and move forward with energy and purpose.

The Survey of North American Waldorf Graduates (2008) indicates that Waldorf Education develops the following in its graduates:

• Multiple Intelligences and Cross Disciplinary Learning
• Creative Problem Solving
• Basis for Moral Navigation
• Thinking Outside the Box
• High Levels of Social Intelligence
• High Levels of Emotional Intelligence
• Environmental Stewardship
• Global Consciousness and Sustainability

The same study found that Waldorf graduates:

• Pursue careers in science and technology 30% more than their peers from other independent schools 
• Study science and math at rates 50% higher than the general US population 
• Report they feel prepared to be creative innovators and adaptable thinkers. 
• Are self-reliant (94%)
• Practice and value lifelong learning (91%)
• Highly value critical thinking (92%) and openness to other viewpoints (90%)
• Are highly satisfied in choice of occupation (89%)

“A composite profile of the recent Waldorf graduate tells us that they (practically all) attend college, for which they feel strongly prepared (95%), are accepted to the top three colleges or universities of their choice (90%), complete their initial degree (92%), and often choose thereafter to continue to graduate or professional training schools. They also feel that their Waldorf education prepared them to be creative and innovative, open minded, empathic, and to take on leadership roles.”

Into the World: How Waldorf Graduates Fare After High School (2020)

See Where Our Graduates Go 

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Learning to Learn in the Age of AI

Educational relevance in the age of AI is on everyone’s mind today, especially in a tech hub like San Francisco. How does SFWS teach students so they will be able to navigate the future? What is important for them to learn in today’s world that will also serve them tomorrow? 

Critical thinking and creative intelligence are developed through experiential learning: through observing, playing, doing, making, trying and failing and trying again, and most importantly, engaging with the world. By teaching through experiences, we support our students to lead their own learning and grasp subjects in deep and meaningful ways.

At San Francisco Waldorf School, we use technology mindfully, as part of an intentional digital literacy program. Based in neuroscience, we focus on human connection first, introducing technology into the classroom gradually. We support students to develop the mindset, judgment, determination, and habits they will need to invent and interact with new technologies, rather than simply teaching them to use existing tools. They graduate from High School fully prepared for higher education and ready to pursue careers in technical and non-technical fields.

See how our Twelfth Graders direct their own learning through Senior Projects and the Senior Play. 

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Healthy Achievement and Resilience

Our education supports healthy, balanced achievement through a well-rounded curriculum that develops a wide range of capacities and skills. Waldorf education is sometimes called a liberal arts education for its breadth, ensuring students are exposed to many fields of study to love and in which they develop proficiency. Finding joy in learning is important in and of itself, but it also has the benefits of reducing anxiety—now epidemic in young people—and helping students learn to support and be supported by their peers. 

Our students are determined to make an impact and they want to excel. We help them develop resilience as they engage in a curriculum that requires them to spend time outside their comfort zones and learn to persevere through challenging tasks, whether that’s a mathematics puzzle, a steep hike on an outdoor trip, or a particularly tough Chemistry lesson. We also support students to sharpen their abilities in the areas where they demonstrate extraordinary skill or passion, so that they learn to continuously hone their craft and pursue success.

An Education Built on Relationships

The relationship between teacher and student is at the core of our education. Teachers form close relationships with each student over many years, through looping, where a teacher stays with a class for several years in the Grade School, and small class sizes that allow for personal interaction. This allows faculty to discover their students’ unique gifts and challenges and learn how to inspire and support them. Our classroom culture, trips, and extracurriculars are also designed to teach students to understand and care for themselves and support each other. Outside the classroom, faculty, staff, and families create a community that nourishes all of us, extending and strengthening the learning environment of our students.

At left: In Summer 2025, Tenth Grader Pallavi Chambers participated in a college-level UCLA Art course. SFWHS Art Teacher Yoriko Yamamoto (who recommended Pallavi for the program) visited Pallavi in the studio and attended the final exhibition. Teachers supporting students is a hallmark of our school!

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Our History

In 1978, a group of committed members of the San Francisco Bay Area Branch of the Anthroposophical Society saw the need for a Waldorf School in San Francisco. With the guidance of Rene Querido and other friends from Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, CA, this founding group incorporated the San Francisco Waldorf School Association, with plans to open a Kindergarten in the fall of 1979. This same group became the first Board of Trustees and hired the founding teacher, Monique Grund. Soon others, including founding parents, were invited to join the Board provided they continued the school's commitment to work out of the educational insights of Rudolf Steiner.

With the support of the Dakin Family, our first Kindergarten opened in the noted Campfire Girls building on Arguello Boulevard, designed by Julia Morgan. Twelve founding families signed up, but that number grew quickly. The following year, in 1980, SFWS moved to its current site, where it expanded its footprint with the acquisition of two adjacent properties while growing the Grade School through Grade 8.  The Preschool program has separate classrooms just a few blocks from the Grade School and our Parent-Child program found its home at the historic Arts and Crafts Parish House of the Swedenborgian Church. The "roots" of the school were extended into the Nursery, which opened in the early 2000s.

In fulfilling the founding intention to become a full Preschool-Grade 12 school, San Francisco Waldorf High School was opened in 1997, and moved to its now-permanent home in West Portal in 2007. This state-of-the art school campus is the first in San Francisco to be awarded the prestigious LEED Gold certification by the U.S. Green Building Council. In 2020, the Bushnell Center for Athletics and Community, with its award-winning architectural design, including an iconic curved edge and living wall, opened on the High School campus to welcome the whole community, neighbors, and friends for games, camps, special events, and gatherings.

Why a Nautilus?

In the process of adopting the nautilus as our school logo, there was full community participation, under the direction of designer Adelaide Mejia, a former parent and Board member. There are many reasons to have chosen the nautilus: one is that the nautilus seemed to depict a child's development, moving out into the world from one chamber to the next. Also, the movement from within to outward that the nautilus shows (and symbolizes) can also be seen in our curriculum, especially if you see the movement in reverse, as moving inward from out into the cosmos, becoming ever more detailed as it brings wisdom into the human heart.